The Ocean dropped a surprise new single "Preboreal" earlier last month, and has now announced a brand new record Holocene for May 19. Holocene is the closing portion of the quadrilogy featuring Precambrian from 2007, Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic from 2018, and Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic in 2020. Or as The Ocean puts it, Holocene is a shift in sound and an appendix to Phanerozoic II.
Pre-orders for Holocene will be available here on February 14.
"Despite a heavy year of touring, we found the time to complete our new album and after a long odyssey of getting it mixed & mastered (which we will tell you all about when the time comes), we couldn't be more happy with it. Holocene adds a closing chapter to our palaeontology-inspired album series, and presents a gear shift towards electronic realms while exploring new depths of heaviness at the same time.
"Phanerozoic II ended with a track titled 'Holocene,' and that was pointing in the direction of things to come, both conceptually and musically. The track Holocene ends abruptly and yet connects seamlessly with the beginning of the new album, the synths of opener 'Preboreal,' which we released as the first single off the album 2 weeks ago. This is only the very beginning of a journey which once more will end in a very different place than where it began…
"Holocene is an appendix to the 2 Phanerozoic albums and Precambrian, or the final and concluding chapter, making it a quadrilogy if you want so. It's tackling the Holocene epoch, which is the current and shortest chapter in earth's history, but it is essentially an album about the angst, alienation, loss of reason and critical thinking, rise of conspiracy theories and deconstruction of values in the modern age.
"While creeping deeper into our own musical DNA, we have made an album that came out more intimate and captivating than previous ones. An album with which we challenged our writing routine, an album that we didn't foresee coming, but one that we are immensely proud of. We can't wait to share it with you."
